FOR PROFESSORS

RIGHTS INFORMATION

The Crime of My Very Existence investigates a rarely considered yet critical dimension of anti-Semitism that was instrumental in the conception and perpetration of the Holocaust: the association of Jews with criminality. Drawing from a rich body of documentary evidence, including memoirs and little-studied photographs, Michael Berkowitz traces the myths and realities pertinent to the discourse on "Jewish criminality" from the eighteenth century through the Weimar Republic, into the complex Nazi assault on the Jews, and extending into postwar Europe.

List of IllustrationsPrefaceAcknowledgments

1. Above Suspicion? Facts, Myths, and Lies about Jews and Crime2. The Construction of “Jewish Criminality” in Nazi Germany3. The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of the Ghettos4. Inverting the Innocent and the Criminal in Concentration Camps5. Re-presenting Zionism as the Apex of Global Conspiracy6. Lingering Stereotypes and Jewish Displaced Persons7. Jewish DPs Confronting the Law: Prescriptions, Self-Perceptions, and Pride of Self-Control

Epilogue: The Estonia EnigmaNotesIndex

Michael Berkowitz is Professor of Modern Jewish History in the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College London. He is author of The Jewish Self-Image, Western Jewry and the Zionist Project, and Zionist Culture and West European Jewry before the First World War, and has co-edited, most recently, Fighting Back? Jewish and Black Boxers in Britain.

“Making excellent use of rich archival resources, Berkowitz has constructed a tightly argued study. . . . A worthwhile, suggestive investigation that belongs in every library.”—Choice